


Alternate

by GuardianLioness



Series: Young Justice Platonic Soulbond AU [5]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Platonic Soulbond AU, Platonic Soulmates, character musings, post S1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 04:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15789351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianLioness/pseuds/GuardianLioness
Summary: When the Martian girl finishes picking through Roy Harper's head, he can remember two sets of soul marks.Gen/platonic soul mark AU in which individuals have marks for everyone vitally important in their lives.





	Alternate

**Author's Note:**

> Quick Roy musings inspired by commenter Phillipe! Maybe I'll be able to do something more substantial with Roy once I work through my current fic backlog. Some canon divergence like Phillipe suggested would be such fun to explore.

Roy doesn’t feel the skin along his ribs as he draws his hand over it. His bowstring has left callouses where there should be soft fingertip skin. The callouses are an addition to his body, a hardened edge that he, that both of his selves, chose to temper.

He would be able to handle it if additions drew the line between him and the other archer. If he could just be Speedy Plus — plus experience, plus paranoia, plus a laundry list of mistakes that he’ll never be able to live down. It isn’t just additions, though. He’s missing something too.

It’s like the Martian girl is still picking through his head, unlocking memories and tearing out the circuitry of trigger words and programming.

His ribs are bare. Of course they are. The clean, unlit lines are gone.

He remembers staring at them in the mirror as a kid, like he is now. The last holdout hope that he’d mean more to someone.

The tiny arrowhead point, the interlocking circles, the pattern that can’t decide if it looks more like a gash or a feather — now that the repressed memories have been dragged to the forefront of his thoughts, now that his memories don’t _sync_ with each other, it feels like the room is spinning.

Soulbonds don’t change. You can’t alter them except by finding the people who can flood them with color.

Roy remembers two sets with the same clarity. He’s a clone. He’s a new body with new soulbonds. Cadmus’s doctored images burn into his synapses, substituting Speedy’s marks with for his and then flickering back to the way they should be.

He’s not — and has never been — Speedy, and the proof of it is carved into his body.

How many times? How many times before a Cadmus got a clone with marks that could be hidden by the original Speedy’s uniform? Was the original Guardian one of many failures?

There isn’t enough cruelty in the fact that he has another man’s memories and isn’t allowed to truly own them. No, he has to have the light touch of his own life, something separate from the original. He has to have his own personal aurora borealis.

Yellow and red electricity strike across his leg. Blue is inked in a curved arc, like a bird’s wing. Regular, even lines decorate his shoulder in soft white. Smoke in shades of green curls along his chest.

Marks are always activated. His pale, unlit ones guarantee that, no matter how this drama plays out, he’ll be forced to live through to the end of it.

And he knows that’s what Jade wants, what Kaldur, Wally, and Robin want. They don’t understand, can’t grasp how his mind echoes with moments he never lived, days that were never his.

The first day of training with Ollie isn’t his. All the praise, Ollie’s off-handed but gentle correction, the sudden calm, the perfect bullseye — that happened to another man.

Meeting Robin doesn’t belong to him either. The motorcycle chase past Gotham City lines, perching on a rooftop to spot and snipe for Ollie and the Bat? He never did any of it. Even though he remembers the grit and texture of the gargoyle he used for cover, even though he can still hear Robin’s obnoxious laugh.

The thing is…he’s the one that has Ollie’s verdant diamond and Robin’s slice of blue.

Those memories aren’t his, but the permanence of them is.

Has he cheated Speedy in more than one way?

Speedy will never have the memory of sitting with Kaldur after Roy’s mark, an umber patch of stars that curve like a bow, ignited on his arm. He won’t remember that Aquaman lead Ollie away so they could speak, only for a comfortable silence to fall over them instead. Two friends, just simply _being_ , listening to the ocean waves drone against the shore.

He’ll never recall the thrumming energy that radiated off of Kid Flash as both he and Robin shrieked over the crescent mark just underneath the still-bleeding wound on his shoulder. Only Roy will ever have the feeling of satisfaction and ease as Robin’s mark flared to life, overwhelming any pain.

Those moments are his, solely his. Those bonds belong to him, and they’re irrevocable. It means that leaving them behind for the real Speedy to have isn’t an option.

And really, he doesn’t want to leave them to anyone else, especially not someone so like him and yet so different. He wants to keep Kaldur’s quiet friendship, Robin and Wally’s admiration, Jade’s— he’s not sure he can call it _love_ , but her intoxicating pull.

There’s a responsibility to find his original. If Roy takes it on instead of letting Ollie mess it up, maybe he can come to some kind of peace about the whole thing. Reach some sort of balance.

For now, he’ll press on, searching for his missing progenitor and jealously guarding the ties that bind him. He’ll grit his teeth through the gray, for their sakes, and pray that their colors can fill him with vibrance once more.

 


End file.
